Little
by little its flames were smothered until in manhood there seemed no
spark of it left alive. Many years were to pass ere it was to revive
again, as by a miracle. I travelled. Awakening at dawn, I saw, framed
in a port-hole, rose-red Seriphos set in a living blue that paled the
sapphire; the seas Ulysses had sailed, and the company of the Argonauts.
My soul was steeped in unimagined colour, and in the memory of one
rapturous instant is gathered what I was soon to see of Greece, is
focussed the meaning of history, poetry and art. I was to stand one
evening in spring on the mound where heroes sleep and gaze upon the
plain of Marathon between darkening mountains and the blue thread of the
strait peaceful now, flushed with pink and white blossoms of fruit
and almond trees; to sit on the cliff-throne whence a Persian King had
looked down upon a Salamis fought and lost.... In that port-hole glimpse
a Themistocles was revealed, a Socrates, a Homer and a Phidias, an
AEschylus, and a Pericles; yes, and a John brooding Revelations on his
sea-girt rock as twilight falls over the waters....

I saw the Roman Empire, that Scarlet Woman whose sands were dyed
crimson with blood to appease her harlotry, whose ships were laden with
treasures from the immutable East, grain from the valley of the Nile,
spices from Arabia, precious purple stuffs from Tyre, tribute and spoil,
slaves and jewels from conquered nations she absorbed; and yet whose
very emperors were the unconscious instruments of a Progress they wot
not of, preserved to the West by Marathon and Salamis. With Caesar's
legions its message went forth across Hispania to the cliffs of the
wild western ocean, through Hercynian forests to tribes that dwelt where
great rivers roll up their bars by misty, northern seas, and even to
Celtic fastnesses beyond the Wall....

IV.

In and out of my early memories like a dancing ray of sunlight flits
the spirit of Nancy. I was always fond of her, but in extreme youth I
accepted her incense with masculine complacency and took her allegiance
for granted, never seeking to fathom the nature of the spell I exercised
over her. Naturally other children teased me about her; but what was
worse, with that charming lack of self-consciousness and consideration
for what in after life are called the finer feelings, they teased her
about me before me, my presence deterring them not at all. I can see
them hopping around her in the Peters yard cr